Zolf et Coagula
by liriaen
Summary: HP/Fullmetal Alchemist crossover; In which Master Snape's boy discourses on the Work Which Transforms God. Severus Snape x Zolf J. Kimberly, Elizabethan AU, written for the Halloween mash-up on "yaoi challenge".


(HP/FMA crossover) In which Master Snape's boy discourses on the Work Which Transforms God. (Severus Snape x Zolf J. Kimberly, Elizabethan AU, written for the Halloween mash-up on "yaoichallenge".)

**Title**: Zolf et Coagula  
**Author**: liriaen  
**Prompt**: Severus Snape/Zolf J. Kimberly, Renaissance AU.  
**Rating**: R  
**Wordcount**: 5.140  
**Disclaimer**: No harm intended, no money made. Snape and Harry are JKR's, Kimblee belongs to Arakawa-sensei.  
**Summary**: In which Master Snape's boy discourses on the Work Which Transforms God.  
**A/N**: Being a late 16th, early 17th century pastiche. I had to set this some years later, actually, making it late Elizabethan, because I discovered that the Renaissance wasn't all that hot on Alchemy. This piece wouldn't be what it is if I hadn't been able to consult Peter Ackroyd's "The House of Doctor Dee" and some rather... odd... treatises. Katilara and Erastes graciously offered their skills as betae. Kimberly is Kimblee here, and any remaining mistakes are my own, obviously.

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**Zolf et Coagula**

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I don't know, good sir, where would you pray me go? My family being gone into the earth and all. The alms-house won't take me; the men at the gatehouse ran me away with cudgels, calling me a cutpurse and a brazen liar.

I've asked around the playhouses; they always need a bit of help, I thought, and my master had oft called me a pretty fellow, a right proper little Ganymede. Now I am led to believe he did so in jest, for they would not give me employ.

So, if it is all the same to you, good sir, let me sit here in our ruined walls. They look tottering, but they're ample shelter for one so small as I. But if you were so good as to give me a penny so I may buy a loaf of rye and a cup of ale? 'T would be most kind. There is a bitter coldness in the air tonight.

Mh? No sir, I'm not afraid. It's only a little ash. And does not the Bible say, dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return? I've... I've seen worse. This bit of smudge is nothing.

Maybe a gallant gentleman like yourself would have me as his servant? You would not regret it, sir, by the love of God. For do you see me begging, wringing my hands in bitterness, now that my home is cinders? No, sir. I'm not an idler nor a cozener, and would give you no reason for complaint.

I know how to read and write and am most diligent, sir. Not one for the cockpits and bear fights and ale houses, me.

_The ragged boy has the most damnable smile, and as he falls into step next to the man, the man notices the good make of the urchin's garments: a sober doublet of black Flemish velvet, a hose of wool and a linen shirt. Soiled now, and humble to begin with, granted, but by no means shabby. So the man takes the boy to an inn and sits him down to roasted meats and hot wine, and while the child eats - for that he is, a child barely out of his first decade - the man wonders where he got his good manners. The boy carves his meat in silence and does not slurp his wine; he washes his fingers in the little bowl of water and wipes the plates clean with bread. The man lets him finish in peace before he starts questioning him._

---

My mother was an honest wife, sir, and my father one of Lord Dumbledore's men. Both departed this world when I was quite small, and I was given into my late master's care. He was a dour fellow, my master. I can right safely say that now without having to fear him cuffing my ear or slapping my face. But he was a master all the same, and I think no less of him, now that he has gone before us.

He was no longer a young man, if ever he were. He did not hold with newfangledness and vain nothings. So he dressed in black, always, and in the closely tailored gowns of bygone years - no padded jerkins, no stenciled leather for him, and certainly none of the Spanish cloaks that are all the rage among the gentlemen this year. No, he used to say, man was not made to ape a peacock, so his prefered colour was black, a most scholarly colour, to be sure, and he kept his hair and beard trimmed after the old English fashion.

A virtuous man, my master, though invested with a sharp tongue. His trade was that of apothecary, and had he not been possessed of such a crabbed and wayward nature, why, the whole town would have called at all hours to procure their pills and lozenges, their draughts and powders from us. It was known that his were the best, but few people braved to cross the threshold of my master's shop. His gaze was sharper than a hawk's, and his puss sour enough to purge our patrons on the spot.

If there is one sin a godly examiner could lay at my master's feet, then, let it be his contrary disposition. He was... faultless in all else, I believe. So rest him God.

Of course that was before that knave Kimblee came into our house.

_There's a small scar on the boy's forehead, shaped in the likeness of a lightning bolt, and the man peers curiously as it wrinkles in a frown. Something has just crossed the boy's smooth features, if only for a second; an emotion that mars his handsome face like pock-marks. Gazing up at the smoky rafters, the boy starts rocking as if he were a simpleton, rubbing his arms and muttering to himself._

---

It had been raining hard all night, and the morning mist rose as vapour into the air when I stepped out into the yard to draw water for my master's ablutions. I had already emptied his close-stool when I heard a hard knock on our front door. Too early for the egg merchant, I thought, and it wasn't one of the days when the washer woman came to do my master's bidding.

A beggar then, and so I was resolved not to answer, but my master already called out from his chamber. His voice was the most perfect mirror of his temper, and he sounded mightily displeased. "Harry, you foul little imp!" he cried from the stairs. "May you lead the apes in Hell - are you deaf, boy? See who it is!"

"God give you good morrow, too," I replied meekly and went to unbolt the door.

By the Blood of our Saviour, never will I forget the first time I laid eyes upon him. Insolent as any popinjay, he was leaning against our door jamb, like a great visitor too lofty to come calling, even though his body stank and his face betrayed his quarrelsome nature. His greasy hair did nothing to hide a black eye, and he had scratches on his cheek that at first I took for signs of the pox.

He was a dark man, I could tell, and crossed myself.

There was no starched ruff of cambric on him, nor proper jerkin or vest. He wore a threadbare coat of wool and a soiled shirt open to his breast, and there was the smell of drink on his breath.

I opened my mouth to tell him get himself hence, this was not a charitable church door, when he said: "Well, let me in, whelp; I have come for Master Snape."

"What could be your trade at this hour, good sir," I replied. "My master has not risen yet."

At which he laughed like a man possessed and gave me a great fright, so I shrank back, hastening to close to the door, but he had already set foot in. He must have escaped from Bethlehem hospital or Newgate prison, I thought, so wild and roving was his eye. I cried out most dolefully, until my master came down in his gown.

"What is your pleasure, sir," he snarled at the strange fellow, "to disturb my peace and strike fear into my servant?" He cuffed the back of my head with the heel of his hand and pulled me aside to get a better look at the man. "Must I call a serjeant-at-arms to dispatch of you?"

"By your leave, sir, I come to you in your capacity as a philosopher of great renown. They say you're a mage who dabbles in the secret-"

My master grabbed him by the greasy collar of his coat and threw his head against the wall, hard enough to set our boards of plates and mugs a-rattle. "What speak you of, knave? What prattle of a loose and blackened tongue is this?"

"And are you not him," the other replied, now wheezing from the pressure applied to his gullet, "the great conjuror Severus Snape?"

I saw my master blanch and turn whiter than a mussel. It is one thing to brew a medick against the gout and the French Disease, or even to distill a vial of bitter herbs for an unwed mother to bring about a colic, and quite another to be called a practitioner of the black arts. The market places each have their stalls of astrologers and doctors of the arts, mountebanks all, who scour the dunghills for ingredients and mumble Latin tittle-tattle over their alembics, promising the most wondrous cures. But I know not of a single man their noxious concoctions saved, nor a single horoscope they cast that rang true. Now and then one of them will be stood on the pillar, but like a miner may be killed by rockfall and a fisherman may drown, such is the risk of their trade.

But to be accused of dark dealings? Such is a grave charge, and I could tell that my master's humours were frothing, or choleric, as they say. I could only stand by and watch as he dragged the man into the parlour and threw him about in a merry dance of fists.

The other lolled and laughed like a mad wolf, and so goaded my master on until I was afeared they might kill each other. I was about to run out into street and cry murder when my master let up and fell next to the stranger onto the rush-strewn floor, laughing.

It must be the fits, or the falling sickness, I thought, when my master exclaimed, "What is above lies below, and what lies below also is above; hence proceed wonders!" Sitting up he fastened his gown, all dishevelled now like a strumpet's, and offered the man a hand to pull him to his feet. "Get to, Harry," he said to me, "get to and buy us a jug of aquavitae, and some fresh pies to celebrate Master Kimblee's return to the land of the living." His change of heart was as sudden as mine was slow, thus he barked at me that I should not catch flies in my mouth but make haste.

As I was walking down the lane I marvelled what could have set him on this new course, and with such speed. They must have known each other of old, I mused, and with the other man brought so low, my master did not recognise him on sight.

So, fixing this resolution in my head, I continued quickly on my way, for my master hated to be kept waiting. Upon my return I found the two gentleman engrossed in learned conversation, speaking of phenomena of which I only have an inkling, and only through my master's mercy: of the spiritus mundi, that great breath that suffuses all, of astronomia and alchemy, of the balances of sulphur and mercury, and the Great Work called Transmutation which they only dared whisper about in the most hushed of tones.

Mister Kimblee - thus my master addressed him now - followed me with his eyes, his aspect leering, and I tell you no great secret when I say that his presence intimidated me. "You trust the boy?" he asked my master, who pushed lank hair behind his ears and threw me a strange look.

"Do not mind him," my master replied. "He's a witless child and much like a dog in all of his ways. Are you not, Harry?"

"Sir," I mumbled, pouring them fresh wine.

"He is good material for the hangman's scaffold," Kimblee smiled at me, "that much is certain."

To which I said nothing but continued serving them, until my master pulled me close. "Mister Kimblee is speaking in gross jest, young Harry, and as one who knows the gallows... quite intimately. Do not take it to heart." With that he gave me a little shove that sent me wheeling, and both men laughed merrily at my discomfort.

---

They spent all day closeted in my master's workshop, and the next, and the day thereafter, calling for me to bring them wine and water, meat and Dutch cheese and bread, and strong drink in the evening.

With my master so taken with our guest, who even slept in his room on a sack of straw and sweet herbs, I tended to the apothecary as best I could, in three days selling more purgation pills and antidotes and fomentations for the ague than my master sold all week. But that is neither here nor there. In truth, my heart was heavy.

I did not like to see my master so feverish; it did not strike me as healthy. One night, as I was serving them supper, he took me gravely by the hand and solemnly impressed upon me that they had embarked upon a great enterprise, and I was not to disturb them, no matter what unearthly sounds might come from his rooms, or from the very walls of our house.

He had never been one for gimcrackery, my master. He did not bother with trifles. He joked not. And when he forbade me to enter his rooms, I thought I saw his destination.

For, you see, simpkin as he made me out to be, I knew what heavy folios and tomes he kept under lock, what marvels he did not desire me to lay eyes upon. Some were of his own handwriting, that small angular script I found so difficult to unravel; some were printed, some written by other, more ancient hands. Some were wrapped in oilcloth and leather bindings, others fell open of their own accord and rustled as if imbued with life. Unbeknownst to him I had spent many an hour among his papers, and while I could not read those in the foreign tongues, the Greek and Hebrew curlicues, the Arabic which looked like slings and arrows to me, I came to enjoy what strange evidence his library contained.

Thus I leafed through the pictures in his Clavicula Salomonis, and through Trithemius. There were modern works like the writings of Masters Dee and Kelley, as well as those Italian fellows, Pico della Mirandola, and the other whose name escapes me. He kept transcripts of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, too, but those did not command my attention as much as the tales of the druids and giants that had founded England. 'Tis true, sir, this very city is built on their bones! Ride out to Ludgate - does it not look like a fallen giant's elbow to you?

But I cry you mercy, sir. I prattle idle.

See, my master always kept his counsel in his studies. Yet now he threw all caution out the window, like the piss in his close-stool, all for some coxcomb an ill wind had blown to our door. What mirabilia did Mister Kimblee have to show for the good grace with which he was received? Naught, I tell you. By day he ate our pies and apples, and by night he made the floorboards creak. I farted at him; I still do.

---

_The boy looks up as if waking from a dream. "'Tis neither perjury nor born from the brain-sickness," he says, "but the truth, so help me God," and the man smiles encouragingly and orders more wine with nutmeg to keep the boy talking. He watches in silence as the child clears the plate of hot spiced cakes he's ordered. The small face looks serious and intent, but still not sated. After devouring the sweetmeats, the boy has to pause at last. Accompanied by a polite burp and some well-mannered picking of his teeth, he gapes at the man's hands, now busy winding a pocket watch._

That's right pretty, isn't it? Solid English work, I am sure; not like Kimblee's outlandish design... His was all flat and strange-looking. Whatever artificer made it, I am sure his reward is paid in Hell. Master Kimblee wore it by a chain of links and would not suffer me to touch it.

He was sitting in my master's closet, and called to me, did I want to gaze upon his watch? To which I nodded, for it caught the light most wondrously, but when I approached he snatched it away and bellowed a great laugh. "Sit, sirrah. Sit," he said, the very image of falsehood. "Your master has gone out for the day, has he not? So keep me a little company. Sing me a ditty, or play me the lute. Do you know "New Fashions" by Master Cobbold?"

I thought Bacchus had been upon him, so vile was his breath, so garrulous his temper. Then he wrested my hand and forced me to my knees. Thus overcome by terror, I began to sing out in a quavering voice, as feeble as a mewling babe,

_Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown on me?_

_And will thy favors never lighter be?_

_Wilt thou, I say, forever breed my pain?_

_And wilt thou not restore my joys again,_

upon which Master Kimblee struck me with a heavy blow to the head. God's truth, sir, I do not know what imp possessed me, to sing a hanging tune! It must have been a spirit passing through, or my fear, mayhap, that made me lose my wits and offend the rake, for sure enough he struck me again, causing me pangs I would feel all night.

"Let me recompense you for your good courtesy," he spat and knelt to hold my wrists. Soon his greasy hair hung into my face, and he was fiddling with my hose and stockings as if we were in a bawdy-house and I a spintry and he about to wait upon me. His wrists, I could see now, were fiery inflamed, as if he'd been clapped in irons for a long hard time, and when he lifted his hands to my neck, I caught a glimpse of strangely blackened palms. But then he swiftly rose and left me to cover myself, for no sooner had he showed his reeking pizzle than my master was heard to return.

I sprang from the chamber and made great haste to meet my master downstairs to take his mantle, for he sorely hated to wait, or not be bidden welcome. He looked at me as if he had a megrim, drawing his brows together, but not saying a word. Whereupon I ducked away into the kitchen to busy myself with supper, lest the mutton might not be done to my master's taste.

I heard him whisper to the villain, speaking in grim and urgent tones, and thus I knew he was displeased. Soon after the rafters shook with his irritated step, and ere long Mister Kimblee let out a great cry; whether from dismay or something else, I know not.

That night my master commanded me to set supper in the best room, which I secretly deemed meet, welcoming anything that removed him from this fellow's sphere, if only for an hour. While he carved the meat, my eye wandered to the painted cloths that covered the long wall - beauteous works that never failed to capture my fancy. Our turbulent stranger, though, would have none of it.

"Your boy has too much black gall," Kimblee observed, "he is distraught of the mind. Or is he purblind that he stares so? Surely you do not let him get close to your works?"

"Not the Opus Magnum, no," my master replied. He stared at me hard, willing to break my look of defiance, but then his eyes softened. "But no more of your frowardness, Kimblee. If we are to attempt his," he said quietly, all the while looking at me, "I cry you keep peace in my house."

---

That night I was visited by a dream that made me doubt our Mister Kimblee was a true seeker of knowledge. Oh sir, for if he was, 't must have been the wisdom of ravens and carrion-eaters. Will you believe when I say I saw him on the scaffold? He was a meagre bundle of bones tied to a cart, rattling down Tyburn way, and there was a great throng to accompany him on his last journey. He was to be hanged until half-dead, the town crier read, then taken down and quartered alive. After that, his bowels were to be cut from his body and thrown into the fire within his sight, and he beheaded for his crimes.

It was a sad sight, sir, with no friars to sing the Miserere for him. Kimblee sat shivering on the cart while they took him to his place of death, but instead of praying for his soul, the rogue uttered the foulest oaths. He was naked except for the threadbare gown they'd given him at Newgate, and his laughter smacked of Bedlam.

However, as they led him up the steps, he seemed overcome by a great calm, standing quite tall for someone so wretched. His henchmen were about to bind his ankles, the noose already firmly lodged around his neck, when he begged - most courteously, too, and in words that moved many a matron - for his hands to be released so that he may clasp them in prayer. To which his gaolers piously assented, and-

Oh sir, what ominous portent, and yet I did not know it!

He loudly hailed the Heavens, and, having clapped his hands, he clasped mylord the Bailiff by the shoulders, and... and her Majesty's serjeants and the aldermen, the pike-bearers and the scaffold-builders, they went up in a cloud of greasy smoke, to rain down again as a great bloodied pudding.

My master oft spoke of the rise and fall of all things created, but not like this, sir.

Not like this.

_The boy falls silent and studies the scorched and knife-marked table, fidgeting. Biting his lower lip, he wordlessly shakes his head, that black head of hair that looks as if he'd just risen from his cot. But he has no cot - he sleeps in the burnt-out husk of a house, among the Devil knows what filth, and the man recoils at the thought of it; the whitened bits of charcoal, the blackened brick. The most wretched and tumbling tenement would be better than this. And while he ponders thus, the boy quietly takes his measure, as if deciding whether to continue his tale or slip out into the night, employment be damned. "Prithee, speak on," the man says kindly, signalling for some sack posset for himself, and watered wine for the boy._

I will, good sir, I will. Possess your soul in patience. First I must ask you not to think ill of my master. He was mortal, and it is a mortal's way to... fail, now and then. Yet he knew of things mystical and holy. Like Doctor Dee, he knew the tongue of Angels, even if - Lord 'a mercy upon his soul - he was no angel himself.

See, there was a scrying room in our house he did not want me to enter, but after a while I knew full well what he and Master Kimblee were doing. Communing with ghosts, they were, for didn't I keep hearing unearthly shrieks and noises, as if made by one in great pain? At times there were two voices, an unholy descant and much thumping on the floors, so loud and fierce that I grew faint of heart.

I make no secret of it, sir - 't was Mister Kimblee that brought about these spirits. And I saw him narrowly prying after my master like a hungry dog, keen to raise more of these spectres whenever my master had time to leave his alembics.

And... and Master Kimblee watched me, too. His lean visage would follow me ev'ry time I crossed the room.

"A worthy sacrifice, Severus," he'd whisper to my master. "A boy from an old line, and pure, too. Will you but look at him!" he'd say. "By the Planets, I'd like to straddle him and hold his lilywhite neck!"

My master would draw me close then and lift me onto his lap to pet me. "Thou shalt not have him," he'd say gravely. "And wouldst thou choose the weak-backed filly over the stoned horse?" he would add, to which the rogue would let out a great roar.

But it did not take Kimblee's eyes off my back. Nor did it stop his whisperings of "sacrifice". Until... until.

Oh, sir.

_Now the boy is shaking like a leaf, his breath shuddering, and the man bids him speak no further if it should pain him thus - as it stands, the man has a good idea of what happened thereafter. He does not wish to unduly discomfort the boy, though, so he simply sits and rakes through his braid, willing the child to be well, be strong for whatever fate has in store for him. And yet... he wants to know about Crimson Kimblee, and the sacrifice, and he won't get either should the boy lapse into a melancholy fit now. "Tell me," he whispers at last, patting the boy's hand. "You can tell me. I shall not judge; that is Our Lord's prerogative. Is it not, Harry?"_

That... that it is, sir.

And so we come to the last of my master's undertakings on this earth, that purification of the elements all alchemists have their heart set upon. You smile, sir. Perhaps you're of the craft yourself? No? Your pardon.

My master knew the zodiac, knew it well, and when the stars aligned, a fortnight after Kimblee's arrival, he bade me bring candles and sacred substances. His eye was bright like astral matter, and his voice sent shivers down my spine. Something drove him forward, I think; be it a dark ambition he had kept from me, or a spell of Kimblee's own devising, for I had not seen him this determined afore. His countenance was consumed by an energy I could not place.

He discoursed raptly: of sulphur red, and of the inmost light and the seed that would spring free once all base matter was blackened and cast off. He spoke to me of lead and gold, griping the small bones in my wrist hard enough to break them.

All the while I could see Kimblee drawing a great circle on the floor, affixing it in chalk and wax. Then the rascal lowered himself unto the floor, to sit amid sigils like I had spied in my master's papers.

"Behold, Harry," my master said, "the mysteries conceived in spiritual conference. Now have no fear; no harm shall befall thee." With that he slipped off my linen shirt, taking me to Kimblee who busied himself with my hose and smallclothes, and had not my master murmured soft words into my ear, I would have bolted and run into the street, naked as God made me.

But my master petted me in the way I liked; he'd always petted me thus, and so he gently steered me twixt Kimblee's hellish scrawls. I let him, for he told me of the import of water of the Great Work, and of a sudden I felt like water in my master's hands. He would not hurt me.

"And know that the Heaven is to be joined mediately with the Earth," he said, thus quoting Hermes Trismegistus, "but the Form is in a middle nature between tie heaven and earth, which is our water."

Meanwhile Kimblee scoffed at my master's gentleness and urged him to proceed more forcefully, in which my master repelled him. "Pray curb your slavering," he said, even as he bent me between them.

My head fell back upon his shoulder, and ere long I saw naught but the flickering candles and our shadows, contorting and casting antick shapes along the wall. My master stroked my back and asked me to observe: "that the ferment whitens the confection and hinders it from turning, and holds the tincture lest it should fly, and rejoice the bodies, and makes them intimately to join and to enter one into another, and this is the key of the philosophers and the end of their work: and by this science, bodies are meliorated, and the operation of them, God assisting, is consummate."

And... and when I think back on it, I know that He was merciful.

For my master must have glimpsed the wickedness in Kimblee's eye, who was the ragman viz. the Devil himself, so that in a great fit of passion he threw me from the circle. He then pursued to wait upon the man and lie with him, so violently and with so little comfort that I expected Kimblee to cry out; but he didn't. With one great moan he received my master and threw his head back, in all resembling a wanton trollop.

The shapes around us grew more fantastick by the second. Thus I crawled away to nurse a scratch I had received from Kimblee and mourn the loss of my master's kindly touch, when I heard him bid me leave, and leave this instant.

I know he couldn't have spoken, for his lips were fastened unto Kimblee's. Yet I've never hastened more to obey him. I could barely grab my clothes ere Kimblee clapped his hands like I had seen in my dream.

That was how I knew my master was undone.

But even aflame and asplutter like fireworks, he held Kimblee down, and... and... thus they were both rendered a-pieces. And our house burned brightly, and well into the morrow.

_Dropping his face in his hands, the boy starts to cry of a sudden - small pitiful sobs that make the man reach out to stroke the crown of his head as if he were a cat. The stranger's mind is reeling from some of the things he has heard, quite unable to decide whether the child is addle-pated or simply pure of heart. When he gently lifts the boy's chin with a gloved hand, he says, "Verily, your master was a brave man, Harry." - Who kept Kimblee from making you a sacrifice. Who'd have thought. -"I am sure he achieved Transmutation in the end," he adds, smiling, for no other reason than to comfort the boy._

_Peering through unruly hair, the child wipes fresh smudges from his cheeks. "You think so, sir?" he sniffles. "I'd fain believe that. I pray for him everyday."_

_"As well you should, Harry," the man nods._

_The child looks solemn, and too old for his age, until he snatches the man's hand again to better listen to its clinks and tinkles._

---


End file.
